


Night Winds in Nos Astra

by Coraniaid



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Illium (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29676219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coraniaid/pseuds/Coraniaid
Summary: There are eighty-five million stories on the commerce planet of Illium.  This is one of them.





	Night Winds in Nos Astra

I knew the quarian would be trouble the minute she walked into my office.

My office isn't in the nicest of neighbourhoods. Even calling it an office is something of an exaggeration. "Repurposed shipping container" would be more accurate. And "inexpertly repurposed shipping container that was falling apart to begin with" would be even more accurate. The whole place has just two rooms: the front office that I work out of, and a smaller room in the back where I sleep. Or try to.

Certainly not much to look at, but the rent was cheap. Besides, I don't take up much space. One of the few advantages of living in a city built for people twice your height.

As I said, it wasn't the nicest of neighbourhoods. Nos Astra spaceport was a mile away: almost straight up. On Ilium's capital, the rich and powerful live up at the top of skyscrapers, in a world of penthouse suites, company boardrooms and luxury apartments. And the rest of us live down in the bottom, scurrying around in their shadows.

That's not a very subtle metaphor. But Nos Astra isn't exactly a subtle place. It's not a city for poets, that's for sure. It's a place where people come to seek other people's fortunes; a place where dreams never seem to come true.

Despite all that it was home, or the closest thing to it this side of the Aethon Cluster. The only home I'd known for a long time.

It had finally stopped raining, if you could even call the water falling from the higher levels rain by the time it reached us down here. Before the quarian arrived, I'd been amusing myself by counting the drops as they landed on the office roof, idly wondering if the fact they seemed to be speeding up meant there was a risk something on one of the higher levels was about to burst or overspill.

Look, you make your own fun in a job like this.

I certainly hadn't been expecting company today. And yet, here she was.

"Are you Yon Devit?" my visitor asked, breaking the silence just as I was starting to enjoy it.

Since that was the name written on the door, and as I was the only other person inside, I had to concede that it certainly looked that way. I'm an investigator, of a sort.

I don't get many random callers down here, but now and then the curious or the desperate manage to find their way to me. People who hope I can solve their problems: track down the toughs who attacked them on the way home from work; retrieve the stolen heirlooms that an estranged lover made away with; find the assassin who killed their father. But I'm never able to help them. Those aren't the sorts of crime I care about.

You investigate the ordinary sorts of crime and you find the ordinary sort of criminals. Krogan mercenaries, drunk on ryncol and blood rage. Ambitious young humans, exiled batarians, desperate and angry vorcha. All of them nasty, brutish and much too large. Exactly the sort of people I don't want to associate with. Find some dashing young turian if that's the sort of crime you care about, and leave me out of it.

When you decide to take a look at the real criminals - the people who hire the mercenaries; who lure in the humans and the batarians and the vorcha with promises of wealth and glory; the people who actually profit from the whole rotten system - well, that's when I come in.

"You're a corporate accountant," the quarian said. "Right?"

"Financial investigator," I corrected, trying not to wince.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she seemed to mean it. "I didn't mean any offence. Is there a difference?"

"In this city?" I said. "If I were an accountant … my rates would be a lot higher."

As I was saying, the real criminals in Nos Astra aren't the dumb grunts who try to rob you at gunpoint in dark alley. They're not the small-time dealers who try to sell you red sand without a license or try to swindle you for a few hundred lousy credits.

The real criminals are the people who get rich in the background while all this happening. Who get rich _because_ all this happening: because they've created a system which works on their behalf, where they get rich whatever happens. A system where the games are rigged and the house always wins. And when these people get rich enough, they stop hiding their credits down the back of their sofa and start to explore the more lucrative investment opportunities offered to them by the galactic financial system. That's where people like me come in.

Numbers are my business, and spreadsheets and audit trails are my weapons. Those are the tools you need to keep track of the important crimes in this city. Investigate the ordinary crimes and you find yourself in back alleys, run-down warehouses and damp little offices. But investigate the real crime on Nos Astra, and you soon find yourself heading straight to the top. And that's exactly why my line of work doesn't pay too well: the people at the top don't want me prying into their affairs, and they're also the people in charge of passing and enforcing what amounts to law here on the fringes of Council space.

Still, it's not all bad. There's money to be made here, if you can bring yourself not to think too much about the consequences. Sometimes I can be useful: people with power realise they can use me to weaken a rival, or to track down somebody stupid enough to steal from the company and not cover their traces. Sometimes one of the people at the top does something so egregious that her compatriots decide they're not going to bend the rules for them this time around. Not often, sure, but sometimes. Once or twice.

It's not exactly the way I'd choose to spend my time, in an ideal galaxy. But in the galaxy we've got? It's a living.

So I poke and prod, when I can. Take small bites out of the big predators swimming all around me. And I try not to think too hard about the fact that by doing this I'm likely helping somebody just as bad.

I gave the quarian the short summary of all this, mostly editing out my own reservations.

"I think you're exactly the person who can help me," she said when I was done.

Unless I'd mangled the spiel worse than usual, she was either a liar or a terrible judge of character.

"How much-"

I named a modest figure. From the way her shoulders slumped, I figured it hadn't been modest enough.

"I can't afford that," she said, sounding dejected. "Yet. But-"

"Then I look forward to speaking again…" I said. "Once you have acquired more credits."

She didn't fight me as I ushered her towards the exit. I didn't doubt she could have, had she wanted to - quarians are tough, whatever you might have heard - but her heart just wasn't it.

It was only when we got to the door that she tried to argue her case again.

"Please," she said. "You're my only hope. I know something very wrong is happening but I don't know how to prove it and nobody seems to care."

I shrugged helplessly, spreading my arms as wide apart as I could to indicate the city around us.

"Welcome to Illium, Rannoch-clan."

* * *

It didn't end there, of course.

A couple of hours later, I had two more visitors. Asari, this time. Confident and superior in the way only asari know how to be. And young, too: barely out of their first century if I had to guess. They landed outside the office in a flashy skycar that probably cost more credits than I'd made since arriving on this planet.

They left the engine running as they sauntered inside. Kept the music playing too: one of those pounding bass rhythms that only exists to test speaker systems and to irritate the sensibilities of previous generations. I'd have felt bad for the neighbours, if I'd had any.

I always forget just how tall asari are. Even if I'd stood up from my desk they'd have both towered over me. So I didn't bother doing that. Didn't bother saying hello, either. I could tell straight away that these two weren't prospective customers.

(I realised, belatedly, that I hadn't actually said hello to the quarian that morning, either.)

"Our boss wants to speak to you," one of them said, wrinkling her nose up as if she'd smelled something terrible. Well, maybe she had. One of the advantages of wearing an exo-suit down here was that I didn't have to breathe what passed for the fresh air.

"Has she … made an appointment?" I asked, pretending to consult the diary program on my terminal.

"The boss doesn't make appointments," the other one of the pair said. Or maybe it was the first one again: to be honest, I wasn't paying attention. "She doesn't make house calls either. Other people come to her."

"I'd love to oblige," I lied politely, "But it's my lunch break, you see, so perhaps …"

"Get in the skycar," she said, throwing a withering look over my head that I pretended not to notice.

I could have argued further, but I had a feeling they were close to lifting me up and physically carrying me out of the building. And I hate it when people do that.

* * *

The trip upcity was uneventful. The two asari sat together in the front, leaving me alone in the back to gather my thoughts. Mostly I was thinking things like _oh shit_ , which aren't the sort of thoughts that take long to gather. I peered out of the window instead, hands gripping the armrests tight, and I tried to convince myself I was enjoying the view.

We wound up on a landing pad outside an impressively fronted building that on another world would have been a bank or a temple. Here, of course, it was … well, something not too far off either, come to think of it. A place where money came to rest, and supplicants came to pray. I guess the prayers in the temples mostly went unanswered too.

My new friends escorted me into the building, up a short flight of stairs and into an expensively decorated reception chamber, where they handed me over to a bored looking secretary. After making me sit for a while, tapping away at her terminal, the secretary finally motioned me through the big double-doors behind her.

I took a few cautious steps into a dark office - one that was clearly big enough to swallow mine, living quarters and all, even without removing the furniture - and then I was face to face with whoever it was had wanted so badly to see me.

The would-be commandos I'd met hadn't given their boss's name, but I realised when I laid eyes on her why they hadn't had to. I knew who this was right away. Mallene Sederis. One of the rising stars of Nos Astra: not quite at the summit yet, but heading inexorably there. Ambitious, talented, feted and championed by the fawning local media. A multi-millionaire already, to the extent anybody knew anything reliable about her finances. And not afraid to leave a trail of dismembered bodies and ruined business rivals in her wake.

She had a claw in a lot of nets, as my people say. Speculative technologies like VI development and cloning research. Long-term investments like colonization projects, starship construction and red sand manufacture. Private equity, payday loans, futures trading, some old-fashioned usury and racketeering. But most of the really profitable stuff was legal. Or mostly legal, which is always good enough for Ilium.

And here she was, in the pale blue flesh: leaning slightly forward in her chair as she stared at me like I was something a vorcha might have found in the trash and turned his nose up at eating.

Sederis wasn't much for pleasantries, either. I guess that's where her people learned their social skills.

"You've been talking to a former employee of mine," she started. "A quarian by the name of Zar'Fela nar Selani."

This was probably true, I thought. I hadn't asked for the kid's name, but I figured that there couldn't be too many quarians in the city.

"She may have made certain allegations," the asari continued, not waiting for me to respond. "Allegations of a sensitive nature. I won't trouble you to repeat them."

I agreed that she might have done. Of course, the truth was that I hadn't let her, but that didn't sound like the sort of detail Sederis wanted to be bothered with just now.

"Let me be clear," she said. "Miss nar Selani's contract has recently been terminated. Her work was not up to the exacting standards we required. And the embittered ramblings of disgruntled former employees mean very little here on Illium."

Sederis had a really nice desk, I thought. Genuine marble, by the looks of it: the real stuff, chipped out of the ground, not the cheaper synthesised alternative. I kept myself busy examining my reflection in the desk's polished surface while Sederis continued to monologue.

"If you try to investigate anything you may have heard, you will not discover anything of interest," she said flatly. "You will not be able to substantiate any of the baseless claims Miss nar Selani may have made. You will only waste valuable time and resources, and possibly risk the reputation of your own agency."

Sederis looked at me over her desk without blinking.

"And," she added, "If you try, I will personally pull your guts out from your exo-suit after I kill every fucking person in this city stupid enough to have ever cared about you."

I appreciate it when people are up front with you like that. Makes it easy to do business.

After she'd made her point, Sederis had her secretary escort me out of her office and back into the lobby. From the brief look they exchanged, I had the impression their relationship was more than strictly professional. Not that it bothered me. There were plenty of things going on here that weren't any of my concern.

Nobody offered me a lift back to my office, of course. They never do.

I made a point of inspecting the building carefully on my way out. I didn't imagine I'd ever be invited back.

It was a nice place. High ceilings, large windows. And we were high up enough that those windows were letting in genuine natural sunlight. There were ornate fountains pumping real water out into the air, and impressionistic paintings decorating the walls, each one of them unique, as far as I could tell. I don't know much about art, except for its baffling popularity among the idle rich, but I suspected these were all originals, not reproductions.

I've heard the Earth-clan have a saying: "crime doesn't pay".

Well, they're a young species. They'll learn better soon enough.

* * *

A sensible young volus would have taken the hint, after that.

What I should have done was simple: stayed out of Sederis's affairs. Made a point of not talking to any quarians for a while, just in case. Maybe decided to take a vacation off-planet for a few weeks. Maybe things would have gone differently if I'd done that.

But I'm not really young, these days. And I'm not sure I've ever been sensible. Besides, I was curious. That's always been a failing of mine.

Anyway, I told myself: I probably wasn't actually going to be killed anytime soon. If the asari really wanted me dead she could just have had her goons throw me out of the skycar on their way up. I had to assume that she hadn't done that for a reason. Maybe she figured I've have been smart enough to back-up anything the quarian told me somewhere secure, where it would be automatically released if I ran into trouble. Maybe she was worried her rivals were paying attention, and guessed that my death would stir up more trouble for her. Maybe she just didn't like the idea of killing a defenceless little volus in cold blood.

Yeah, probably safe to rule out that last one.

After I made it back to my place, I set up a private extranet connection that I was pretty sure was secure and decided to some digging into Sederis's affairs. Not that I ordinarily make a habit of pro bono work, as a rule, but - like I said, I was curious. Figured it couldn't hurt to some exploratory work in my own time. At least as long as that connection really was secure.

I decided to start with the quarian, since Sederis had been kind enough to provide a name. Only took me a few attempts to guess how to spell it, too.

Zar'Fela nar Selani had arrived at Nos Astra spaceport a few months ago. From her name, I assumed she was on her Pilgrimage, though the records didn't say; just listing her species ("quarian") and occupation ("vagrant"). Typical due diligence from the port authorities.

She'd made a few small investments on the trading floors, which had gone surprisingly well, then followed that up with a series of larger investments, which had gone rather less well. Pretty quickly her initial capital had been used up, and she'd been relying on a series of high-interest credit loans from … well, the sort of people who offered unemployed out-of-worlders loans.

A few more increasing risky trades on increasingly alternative investment markets later, and our friend Zar'Fela had found herself living in a part of Nos Astra that made my neighbourhood seem classy. And soon after that, she'd found herself employment in the field we were all supposed to euphemistically call 'indentured servitude', with a minimum contract length of … huh. Well, suffice to say that the kid's Pilgrimage was going to last longer than she might have hoped.

I guess that explained why she'd not been able to afford my rates, anyway.

Curiosity partially satisfied, I turned to the other piece of the puzzle: Mallene Sedaris.

I didn't think I'd be able to find out much about her that I didn't already know, but it turns out I was wrong. One of the first interesting things I found out about Sederis was that she was dead.

That didn't take much detective work on my part: it wasn't exactly a secret at this point. The news was all over the local extranet. Earlier that night, maybe just a couple of hours after I'd had the pleasure of meeting her, the body of Mallene Sederis had been found in her apartment. Ilium Law Enforcement had already promised to launch a full investigation, for what little good that was worth.

 _Well_ , I thought sourly, leaning back in my chair. _Isn't that curious._

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this last year when I was trying to work on something else, but rereading it recently I decided I actually kind of like it. 
> 
> I'm not completely sure where it's going or when I'll next update, but I'm hoping to get the next couple of chapters finished at some (not too distant) point...


End file.
